The new span of the 520 floating bridge opened for a weekend of festivities on Saturday. I walked the length of the span and back with, according to the WSDOT twitter feed, some of the 25-30,000 Seattleites who came out to celebrate another cool transportation improvement!
Despite growing up in The City of Bridges the notion of a floating bridge was new to me when I moved to Seattle. All of the ~446 bridges in Pittsburgh are well above the rivers. WSDOT had a rather neat exhibit that demonstrated and explained the geology, construction methods and bridge design. WSDOT and HistoryLink.org developed site which is an a excellent starting point for anyone interested in the history of the region, peoples and bridges.
Fun day despite the kerfuffle getting the revelers off the bridge. WSDOT and King County Metro responded quickly; many thanks to the people who staffed the event!
The lone black and white image was inspired by images of the original span’s opening in 1963.
Good on you getting out there! That picture of everyone on the bridge is pretty neat. I had thought about doing this but the idea of the shuttles was distinctly unappealing to me. On that note, I’d made plans to do the Cascade Bicycle Club’s ride across the bridge today but a recent shoulder injury put the kibosh on that idea. My youngest son and I were out at the Husky Stadium light rail station this late morning and we saw a bit of the action winding down……
Hey, thanks! Your instinct with respect to the shuttles was spot on. At one point, the wait to get off the bridge on the Seattle side was ~2 hours. The WSDOT and King County Metro teams rallied and, to the disappointment of those waiting to go to the bridge, repurposed _all_ 51 articulated busses to shuttling people off the bridge. The situation didn’t affect me in a meaningful way: I don’t have children, health concerns or, that afternoon, strict plans for the day. I felt badly for the some of the kids and the people working the event on the bridge.
Take care of that shoulder and perhaps we’ll meet in person some time!
That would be neat to run into each other sometime, on purpose or otherwise! I go on a lot of photowalks around the city and spend a fair amount of daily life strolling (or bike riding when I’m not banged up) back-and-forthabouts on 15th Avenue East of Capitol Hill.
I’ll watch for you!
This is wonderful, thanks for the background info and links, and for telling about your experience of this event. And I hope you enjoyed the food trucks!
Thank-you!
I took note of your comment about links and realized I should do a better job to help people know more about the region. Thanks for making me a better blogger! As you can probably tell, I’m a bit new to this so any and all feedback is welcome!
Food trucks: yikes! There were only four and all had run out of food fairly early. Even if they had the ability to restock, the lines were far too long for me.
Great event, though! It will be even better when the span opens to cars and cycles!
I guess some photographers feel that their photo should stand alone but I often feel frustrated because I would like more info, so I often do search. For example, today I saw one blogger post a photo of “Lighthouse Coffee,” that’s all. No link. Fortunately for my curious nature, it was easily searched and the Lighthouse is in upper Fremont.
I agree with your observation about some photographers feeling their photos should / could “stand alone”. That’s rarely the case, though.
I had the great fortune to work at an exception newspaper, The St. Petersburg Times (now the Tampa Bay Times) at a very impressionable age. When I worked at the Times had an incredible group of writers, editors and researchers; I’ve tended to judge, perhaps unfairly, my writing against their work.
I love the B&W photo of the bridge structure and Rainier. I agree that links to further info is very beneficial.